I’ve met everyone in my new office and already forgotten most of their names. I’ve been shown the kitchen and bathroom, the photocopier, and even where the fire escapes are. Now I’m sitting at my new desk, looking at a big blue ring-binder folder with a Brother P-Touch label on it that says INDUCTION.

Inside are 70-odd pages of photocopied policies on things like bullying in the workplace (don’t do it), interstate travel guidelines (cost code 1-803-7229) and a brochure from an external HR company offering assistance in the event I’m concerned about my mental health. I learn that the organisation’s values are resilience, innovation, trust and honesty, which surely sets them apart from all those other organisations who don’t care if you’re a vulnerable, uninspiring, treacherous liar.

For a long time, we liked to kid ourselves that Tasmania is a ‘natural laboratory’ that’s home to a world-class research community. This is not and never was true. But it could be.

Sure, we have some top-notch researchers doing amazing stuff here. You don’t have to dig very deep to find them. Add to that our indisputable advantages in certain niche areas such as marine science, biotechnology, forestry, and health, and the potential is impressive indeed.

Our state is geographically and ecologically diverse, clean and green, effectively self contained, and it offers a lifestyle appealing to many people.

But we need to stop saying things like we’re an ideal base, and that we’re a hub of research activity, and instead prove it. This is eminently achievable in Tasmania, much more so than it would be in any other Australian region. The outcome would be unique and serve as an extremely solid marketing and promotional tool for our state.

Our state could become a small-world network.

This is a friendly reminder to show, don't tell.

In fact, let's start with 'friendly reminder', as in 'this is a friendly reminder that your payment is overdue'. By using the adjective 'friendly' we're giving an impression that an unfriendly reminder is just around the corner, perhaps in the form of a bunch of guys who'll hold you down and piss up your nostrils until you pay up.

I couldn't function without a reminder notification on my calendar. Five minutes until a meeting, BING! Perfect. Being reminded is normal and I'd go so far as to say that these days people expect to be reminded to do most things. It's what the little robots in our pocket are for. A reminder just means, 'That thing you said you'd do a while back? Do it now.'

The people who write these friendly reminder emails could, instead, simply say, 'Hi there. We've noticed your account is overdue. Would you mind attending to that for us?'

This is a reminder that's friendly.

As the MC ended her intro and revved up the audience for the last performer of the night, Rachel the barmaid plonked her teatowel on the sink and took the stage, to rapturous applause. Who will get me my beer now, I thought, but only briefly, as the beer FOMO was quickly replaced with, What the Budweiser is going on here?

Turns out, Rachel Joan is one of New York’s finest stand-up comics. She also runs Old Man Hustle, a tiny twelve-seat dive bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan next to a Hebrew religious goods store. The comedy show she organises virtually every night at 8pm is free. And bloody good. The Hebrew store closes at 6, just so you know.

Somehow, me and the missus scored two of the highly-coveted bar stools, despite arriving a few minutes after the advertised kick-off time. When the show started a few minutes later there were another dozen or so folks standing, cramped into the narrow space between us and the wall. A capacity house.

At this point we were yet to learn that our gifted barmaid (I say ‘gifted’ because I know one when I see one) was the headline act.

The MC took the stage to the usual whoops and hurrahs, the audience high on anticipation, or at least on a gutful of the $3 Genesee-and-a-shot-of-tequilas so popular in the area.

I have it on good authority that explicitly quantifying what you’re writing about in the title of your story leads to a higher click-through rate. That’s a shame, because so often the 'Six things you didn’t know about cataracts' or 'Eight reasons not to believe a digital marketer' stories can leave you feeling a little ripped off. You get the impression that somewhat less work has gone into that particular list than went into, say, the three laws of thermodynamics. In an article I saw recently, 'Seven ways to get a flight upgrade', the number-one tip was:

Be a frequent flyer.

As if you can decide while you’re in the check-in queue to magically become one. You either are or you are not a frequent flyer with that airline, and speaking as someone with a bit of travel-hacking experience I can tell you that anyone who is not a frequent flyer need not trouble themselves with the remaining tips in that particular article. Smile all you like, dress to the nines, if you ain’t Platinum status you’ll sit where you’re bloody well told, you cheeky sod.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me. To the point of my essay, which I could argue segues nicely from the frequent-flying gripe because it was a plane trip to Japan that prompted the idea.

False metrics are everywhere in our media. There’s a TV commercial from QBE insurance that asks,

“What's the chance of this young woman getting a great deal on car insurance? Maybe five per cent? Ten per cent? Actually it’s one-hundred per cent, because we know she’s a safe driver.”

After fielding yet another annoying marketing call Jess observed that we should have a government bill that says, as is the case with vampires, telemarketers can only come into our home if we invite them.

The larger and more complex the subject matter, the harder it is to develop meaningful learning experiences. Without a clear idea of the big picture there's a risk of concentrating too heavily on some learning points while skipping others entirely. It becomes easy to get lost in the information wilderness. More pertinent still is that when you're dealing with complicated or technical topics there's a very real risk of misinterpretation (or just plain getting it wrong), particularly if you as the designer are not well versed in the subject at hand.

I can see them now, a bunch of smug content-marketing ‘experts’ patting themselves on the back for coming up with such a deviously cunning strategy.

People are afraid of missing out, you see. They won’t be able to NOT click on the green button, because the red one represents a clearly negative statement about oneself, and who wants that?

"The fucking comms team's done it again."

So exclaimed the guy I’m sharing office space with at the moment. He'd slammed the phone down and seemed to be appealing to me for some sympathy, because, once again, they'd shot off on their own tangent and published something on the organisation's Facebook page that wasn't just misleading, it was wrong.

Let me tell you a tale. [Please note the Freelance Generalist's warning.]

If you're familiar with the concept of the 'elevator pitch' you'll understand the value in being able to describe a big idea in simple terms.

A good comms framework is your business in a nutshell. It sits comfortably as a layer on top of your organisational workflow and describes all the things that have to happen, in what order and when, and lists the various resources, tools and templates available to help along the way. It need not be complicated or overly detailed but it must be accurate and up to date. Your framework serves to keep everyone within the organisation on the same page (quite literally, a lot of the time).

Why is a kingfisher like a bullet train? Well, it’s not. Not in the slightest. Mind you, there is a bit of an overlap in the kingfisher-bullet train Venn diagram, one that perhaps wouldn’t immediately spring to mind.
 
You see, because of their immense speed early bullet trains caused a bit of kerfuffle. When they entered a tunnel they caused a massive air pressure buildup that manifested itself in a sonic boom at the far end. The neighbours were most unhappy, and in some cases hearing impaired.

Imagine a roomful of bored-looking people forced to listen to a presenter while he reads a list of dot-points to us from each of one-hundred-and-nineteen slides. It's about time someone threw in a lifeline. Or a grenade.

Training material should be slick and to the point. Slides should be used to support what the presenter says, not the other way around. They should be visually appealing, light on text, and certainly few in total number. A handout need not just be those same slides in printed form but modified so it makes sense when read by itself. Pretty basic stuff, huh?

We're all used to commencing a writing project under the assumption that the job at hand is a necessary one. "We need a report on XYZ" or "Small businesses need to know how to become an employer of choice". Often, though, these assumptions are false. Do we really need a report? Where did we get the idea that someone needs a guide on preventing bullying in the workplace? Agreed, if you have something to say that you think is valuable then there's every reason to write about it, but often we're guilty of telling people what we know, not what they need to know. What's the point of spending six months writing a beautiful guide on climate change mitigation strategy if no-one's going to read it?

Your Eureka moment, the one where a big lightbulb goes ‘ting’ above your head, can quickly lead to thoughts of how to protect your newfound IP. But what does it take to get over the line? What sees a patent granted to one invention but not to another? There are some concepts I’d like to introduce to you.

A rather vigorous session on ABC talkback radio this morning highlighted for me the perils of not telling the full story.

Apparently (I didn’t hear the whole thing) a caller made an observation, something to the effect that ‘greedy baby boomers’ benefited from free education and cheap housing, and are now making life tough for the following generations because they’ve locked up all the resources and refuse to share.

Applying for a Visa for China had me a little clenched up recently. Not because of any concern that my application would be knocked back (I’m sure they’re gonna love me over there) but because the online application process is really unclear. It just meant that throughout the ordeal I wasn’t sure whether or not I was doing the right thing, and I couldn’t for the life of me switch off some worrying visions of my being marched into a dark room out the back of Chengdu Airport.

'You're not selling a vacuum cleaner, you're selling peace of mind.'

In many settings sales is about tricking people, and for some reason those who practise such trickery think we're all stupid enough to fall for it. I could tell that Candice, the sweet but dopey real estate agent who sold me my house, had been to this school of thought, when, upon ushering me into a pokey dining room, dramatically announced 'imagine yourself reading the paper in the sunshine by the window while the children play in the fully-enclosed yard.'

​This isn't just a dining room, dammit! It's a lifestyle! I didn't have the heart to tell her that we don't have kids.

Real estate is a hard game. To top it off, agents are routinely required to write about their work and publish it to a newspaper or website with hundreds of thousands of readers, usually with no editorial assistance. It's kind of irrelevant that most agents aren't remotely intimidated by this. Enough to say that it's not surprising that a few errors get through. Here are some we picked up over several years of editing real estate ads (for a company who did appreciate the difficulty).

• This three bedroom brick home could catapult you into numerous outbuildings and a one-car garage.
• Relax after a hard day’s riding in the deep luxury spa.
• A must see if you are in the market for a modern two bedroom unit and only nine years old.
• This home has three bedrooms and two toilets in a popular location.
• Don't wait for someone to grab yours! Enjoy a semi-rural feel.
• 112m² (12m x 7m) garage and workshop.
• Fourth bedroom large enough for two singles or a queen.
• Todd has been busy servicing people in the northern suburbs for five years.
• Nice unit with washing machine and fridge – suitable for a horse, dog or cat.
• Sitated close to busses and only around the corner from the local shops gives convince and easy of living for any cople or family.
  

I know I promised I'd write some businessy stuff, but it's nearly knock-off time and my dog keeps looking at me. Next time for sure.

Nearly everyone I know works in an identical office, regardless of their job. We each have the same desktop, the same filing system, the same “typewriter” and the same messaging system. Peek over the shoulder of any office worker at his computer and I’m pretty sure you’ll be in familiar territory (just be prepared to look away again very quickly).

And that’s pretty cool. The capability that modern software provides means that any one of us can do just about every conventional office task using a familiar set of tools, from writing a letter to balancing a budget, albeit with differing levels of ability. Thanks to computers it’s even possible to run a successful business by yourself. But this newfound ability has come at a cost. Because it has become possible to do so many things at our own desk without the help of others, our employers expect us to actually do them all as part of our job.

Up until the 1980s, a well-run office invariably had someone whose job it was to ensure that things ran smoothly. This person (let’s face it, usually a woman, I’ll call her Joan from Mad Men) would also be responsible for typing up the letters and generally keeping all the plates spinning, while the technicians and strategists and salesmen did their own thing, which usually involved lunch. Joan was the glue that kept the office together. She was very good at organising, and exceptional at communicating, not only with people within the office but also with whatever customers and suppliers formed the basis of the business. Joan had a terrific big-picture view of the organisation, and also had a pretty big say in what that picture looked like.

Then came the desktop computer and it was bye-bye Joan. It was a sad but inevitable progression in the corporate world, as beancounters everywhere realised that for the cost of one Joan you could buy fourteen IBMs.

So now here we sit, alone in our cubicles, with permission (the expectation, even) to do the job that was once Joan’s, particularly the endless writing that’s involved; when we're not writing, we're probably reading or talking about something that we'll have to write about later on.  This highlights two problems. The first is that some people are generally crap at writing. I’ve found that just because someone is extremely clever doesn’t mean they’re necessarily good with words.

The second problem is that when viewed as a whole, this inconsistency in the quality of communication among people in the office can not only look really bad (and unprofessional) from the outside, but can also cause major inefficiencies in process and workflow. Without Joan to keep us in line we do things our own way (and of course that’s the best way), which can lead to differences in quality and in many cases unnecessary duplication of effort. When it comes to getting our corporate message out there we are often guilty of not singing the same tune as everyone else.

Since Joan left, astute managers everywhere have been collaring those of us to whom writing does not come naturally. They make notes in our performance appraisals that our writing needs improvement, and send us off to courses titled “writing for government” and “communication for dummies”. I know this because for many years I’ve run this kind of workshop. And what have I learned? Mainly that these sessions do little to improve the problem that the aforementioned astute manager has identified. A half-day course on how to write better will not significantly improve your writing ability, nor will it address the underlying sickness of poor communication practice in the office.

So, let’s take a step back.

I don’t care if you put the apostrophe in the wrong place, or that your spelling is bad, or even if you occasionally dangle your participles; there are plenty of egg-sucking forums out there that will explain the difference between your and you’re, should you want to read them. There’s much more to writing than spelling and grammar. The odd thing is that people who are good at spelling and grammar tend to think they are good writers but this isn’t always the case. The secrets to good writing are far more wide ranging than grammatical rules and are mainly based in common sense; there are plenty of beautifully-written works out there that don't say anything useful, and plenty of amazing ideas with typos in them.